Sofía Castro, Consultant to the Minister of Culture, City of Buenos Aires; Sérgio Sá Leitão, Secretary of Culture /CEO of RioFilme, Municipality of Rio de Janeiro; Miguel Gutiérrez, Undersecretary of Tourism, City of Buenos Aires;

The event was hosted by the Istanbul Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism. The Istanbul Summit was curated by BOP, working closely with the Chair of the World Cities Culture Forum, Justine Simons, Head of Culture at the Greater London Authority, and liaising closely with all the other member cities. The production and design of the event was managed by Studio Design UK.

Across a three-day programme, the summit was an opportunity for old members of the Forum to meet new city members and to engage in meaningful policy discussions about culture’s role in a world city context.

The summit agenda focused on three main questions:

What can we learn from each other about effective future strategies for promoting culture in our world cities?

How can we extend the influence of culture still further in the world city urban agenda?

How can we work together to continue to demonstrate the value and impact of culture?

The summit sessions were organised around four key themes. These themes reflect the common challenges and opportunities that all participating world cities face in attempting to harness the potential of culture. They have emerged from the research around the World Cities Culture Report itself as well as the discussions BOP Consulting has had with individual cities in preparation for the summit.

The themes were:

Promotion and positioning on the world stage: approaches to promotion, branding and attracting inward investment

The new cultural infrastructure: how world cities are expanding and upgrading their cultural offer

Participation and supporting creative expression: policies and programmes that open up opportunities for all citizens

Strategies for embedding culture across public services: including employment, economic development, social integration and environmental protection

‘The New Cultural Agenda: Beyond Boosterism’, the first policy briefing of the Forum, captures some of the main conversations that took place at the Summit such as going beyond the culture-led place branding of the last decade, democratizing access to culture and the new cultural infrastructure. The document is available for download in English here.

We would like to thank the following for participating and speaking at the World Cities Culture Summit Istanbul 2013: